Paula Penfold

Yeah, I mean, certainly in terms of the reporting grant that exists out in the industry, they were far more qualified for it.

for sure, but institutionally at that time, now, you know, you just look at what Paula Penfold's been doing lately with the Sorority allegations, for example, like it's become And that's extraordinary work, and especially given, you know, you can imagine what the legal letters flying around behind that would have been.

But, you know, at the time, yeah, it just felt like a sort of a...

You know, there was a sort of shift going on, and we were able to just discover things about ourselves as a platform at that moment, yeah.

We sort of already knew that, which is true, but it is good to then have it um uh in in in print in front of you with some people who were involved going this is what the situation is

so here's my view on it because i have seen comments along the lines of that like people have got the book and read it and have gone well look this doesn't tell me anything that i didn't already maybe didn't know but heavily suspected like we know that jordan williams um campaign company was behind ground swell and a lot of other astroturf groups you know that that's what we what we we knew and we knew that they were putting their thumb on the scale and that sort of thing but the thing with nikki hager's book books tends to be what happens afterwards so he puts it out there and it's it's almost like chum in the water uh to journalists to start really pulling on a thread and seeing what happens from that point onwards um i noticed at blue sky there was a comment that someone made Keith goes, right now, that woman, referring to the woman that may have had an issue with Jordan Williams, right now that woman is trying to decide whether she should email Paula Penfold.

And

Paula Penfold has re-quoted that going, my DMs are

open.

So this is the whole thing.

That's right.

Paula Penfold, the award-winning investigative journalist working for Stuff.

It's an excellent piece which I've linked to today in the email newsletter and in the invite about the state of our hospital system and in particular the emergency departments.

She quotes from an emergency department nurse in Gisborne who has had to quit because it's so stressful and exhausting and also from a a doctor in Auckland who has worked as a doctor in combat medicine in Iraq and says that the Auckland hospital's situation is as bad, if not worse.

And I've got to wonder why it was written and why stuff would even allow it.

Like, did no editor look at this and say, hold on a minute, Paula, this is just not in the public interest what you're doing here? I don't think they did.

And so it's a big issue, really big issue for me.

Well, look, again, you and I have talked about this a lot.

It is right.

And therefore, anyone who puts their head above the parapet, in this case, the candidate, Elizabeth, is to be attacked very quickly, dragged into the public sphere and embarrassed.

And so I think the editors would have happily agreed with Paula's piece and whatever it

You

Well, I was going to say, where was the board through all this?

Yeah, I mean, it's been surprising to us that in July it took some reporting from Paula Penfold itself, some really good reporting, about specific allegations made against Barris and other members of the FMA for the board to say, oh, we're now aware that there's issues that need looking at.

I mean, this stuff's been blindingly obvious to us for a very long time, so...

We have slowly got a bit of board turnover as well.